We arrived in Nice on Monday night and met our next host, Quentin. He's from Paris originally but lives in Nice near all of his family. His English is really good because he spent seven or eight years living in Los Angeles as a teenager. He also had another girl there couchsurfing as well so there was five of us in total. We relaxed for the evening chatting about anything and everything over a couple of pizzas and some drinks. Nice has all the feel of a beach town plus the feel of being quite wealthy. For years, lots of people have frequented the area because of the appeal of the French Riviera.
In the modern times, the British did more than anyone to popularize the area by claiming it had healing qualities. In reality, it was just a prescription by many English doctors for sick wealthy patients of a change of climate. After being there, it's easy to understand why they said that. Many of the French noted that the area seemed to simply fill with the ugliest half dead brits they'd seen. Nice is only a recent arrival to France as it was once part of the Italian territory until it was given to the French as a gift for helping the Italians gain independence from Austria. The city also once functioned as a point of exodus for many Jewish people during the outbreak of the second world war. The next day the three of us plus Quentin headed out to see Nice. He was very nice and wanted to show us around the old part of the city and to make sure we had a good time. We had some coffee at a small cafe before making our way down to the main square called Massena Square. Throughout the square, there are seven statues like the one in the picture of humans sitting or standing on a platform and Quentin told us they represent the seven different continents.
From there, we walked through a vegetable/fruit market on our way to the seashore where we were able to see a wonderful view of the whole shoreline and the water looked amazing but the beach was covered in rocks instead of sand. We hiked up the Colline du Chateau, where we were able to get a birds eye view of everything. One of the neatest things about Nice is the airport. It's out on a little swath of land so that the planes land and take off right alongside the beach. Up on the hill is a large waterfall that provides some very refreshing spray on hot days so needless to say, we hung around there longer than we should have.
Afterwards, Quentin took us to a local place that serves a version of crepes called socca. It's something like a crepe but its made from chickpeas instead of regular flour. After our tour with Quentin, we hopped in the car and drove up the coast to a small village called Eze.
It's a medieval town in which the architecture has been completely preserved but the place is crawling with fake artisan shops selling overpriced retail stuff. It has seen the French, Italians, and Arabs through the years. They all fought to have the coveted lookout point as it provides a great way to defend the area. The restaurants sell the typical over priced low quality food and the whole place has just been ruined it seems by the tourism industry. It honestly looked like a mall concept in which they decided to use a medieval town as the decor.
The large crows of people inspired us to head on. I talked the girls into going to Monaco because we were so close. Monaco, of course, is famous for its lack of taxes, being full of rich people, the formula one track, and the Monte Carlo Casino. We drove around for about thirty minutes just checking out the sites and it was incredibly gaudy. The Monte Carlo Casino front was being regulated by the police because there was a film set trying to make a movie. We drove through the area twice in hopes of being caught on film. We saw a lot of people milling about like they were extras in the movie and they just had to wait on the police to get control of traffic. The casino itself looked like a palace. We drove down to the docks and saw some of the most insanely posh boats in the world. The yachts were definitely bigger than many of the houses we've seen.
After bumper to bumper traffic, closed streets, and tons of people, we broke down and called it quits and headed back to Nice. We spent the rest of the evening at Quentin's place for a party he was having for other couchsurfers in the area. The meeting was about everyone taking a hike together somewhere near Nice in the mountains.
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